trying to do it all and live to tell about it

Coastal Hike: Alamere Falls

This past week has been so busy. I said farewell to Jackie, one of my closest friends I’ve made since I moved here, as she is off to France TODAY. A bientot mon amie! I’ve been baking obscene amounts to prepare myself in October when I make a friend’s wedding cake. I welcome any cake flavor suggestions! So it was nice to relax this weekend with a coastal hike. On Sunday, we drove North to Point Reyes for a 7.5 mile hike (out and back) to reach Alamere Falls. It was insanely pretty:

The destination itself is not too far from SF though because of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge and the windy roads of Route 1, it took us about an hour to drive about 18 miles. Isn’t that ridiculous? That drive is not so fun either. If you’re like me and get motion sickness very easily, it’s a really rough ride once you get past Marin. The roads are narrow and very curvy. The day was perfect for a hike. It started off partly cloudy and cool and eventually we saw blue skies and the sun as the day went on.

View from trail.

We started at the Palomarin trailhead which had these really pretty trees in the beginning.

We kept a pretty fast pace. It took us about an hour and a half to reach the falls (3.25 miles). It might have taken us shorter if the path to the falls weren’t so narrow and possibly full of poison oak!

Thankfully we avoided the poison oak and came out to this clearing:

This is where the trail became a bit treacherous. The way down to see the falls is basically just rocks. The climb down wasn’t so bad as there are many small landings. The weather was starting to clear up too so it was just perfect. There are three smaller waterfalls in this area.

First waterfall.

I thought we were done! That these waterfalls were what we were hiking too but Chris mentioned there should be a bigger waterfall along the beach. So we headed towards the beach only to find this cliff and the waterfall way, way down below.

I honestly did not know how we were going to get down there. Luckily we overhead a man saying there was a way down and he showed us. This is where it got a tad dangerous. We had to climb down rocks again but these rocks were much more loose and sharp.

This hiker decided not to go all the way down once he saw how steep the incline was. It was pretty vertical! We met another hiker on the beach that said he had a misstep and tumbled down about 15 feet. So I wouldn’t suggest the trek down to the beach is for everyone.

This is what we climbed down to get to the beach.

See the u-shaped opening? That’s where we started.

I was half-worried about how I was going to get back up but put that aside in awe of the views from the beach. It was very picturesque.

I would definitely recommend packing a small picnic when you get to the falls. We had our PB&J sandwiches on the beach. It was a nice spot to have lunch.

This was one of the best hikes we’ve been on. I would totally recommend it for those looking for a coastal hike. I like how you could access the beach (if you’re brave/athletic enough) unlike the other coastal hikes I’ve been on where you’re pretty far from the ocean. It seemed Spring might be the best time to go since there would be wildflowers in bloom but everything is so scenic so go whenever you can!